In this podcast episode of the Deep Dive, Cortney Harding and Kyle Bylin discuss music curation with outspoken tech exec and startup founder J Herskowitz.

Robin Good's insight:

People want recommendations from people that have their same tastes and values. Human curation is going to make a big difference in how people are going to discover, appreciate and get in love with new music and artists.

From the original article: "In this episode of the Deep Dive, Cortney Harding and Kyle Bylin discuss music curation with outspoken tech exec and startup founder J Herskowitz."

"Curation is a topic that just keeps coming up in the press. Spotify buys Tunigo. 8tracks revamps its website. Songza introduces a paid tier. And Beats Music poaches several high-level people in preparation for a U.S. launch. Meanwhile, Rhapsody and Google Play are talking about how they have been using humans to curate all along.

What does all of this mean? Where might music streaming services take curation next?"

Takeaways:

Individual curators may have an edge over crowd-curation.

Many different types of curation being used.

It remains to be seen whether expert music curators will win over talented unkown amateur curators.

Likely, these different approaches may live all side-by-side, satisfying different needs.

Mood- and experience-curation is a strong emerging trend besides traditional music styles and genres

OnePlaylist.fm is a new web app which allows you to search YouTube videos and the full Spotify catalog for music tracks and video clips and to collect your preferred ones into shareable playists.

You can also import existing playlists straight from YouTube and Spotify. Not only. Once you have created a playlist, you can synch it with your account on YouTube, Spotify, Rdio, Deezer and many other music services.

Newly created playlists can be set to private or public. Public playlists can be shared on social media, embedded on other web sites, and are always published to a dedicated playlist web page that integrates a video player, all the clips in the playlist, related playlists, and a public analytics chart showing views and Facebook shares for that specific playlist.

The service is powered by Spotify.

My comment: Excellent video and music playlist maker. Powerful and speedy search function makes it easy to find any video or track and to arrange it into a publishable playlist. Excellent solution to create/curate valuable, unique and immediately useful content for your audience.

Robin Good: Maurice Boucher takes a stand for human curators in the arts, by placing string emphasis on the fact that purely alorithmic solutions cannot really discern people expressed needs and desires from unexpressed ones.

His central point is this: "At the heart of the online music curation role is the possible solution to the expressed need versus unexpressed desire problem that permeates the Internet and prevents us from developing internet culture beyond purely commercial interests."

He writes: "...I know of no algorithm that can work out the difference between what people ask for and what they actually desire.

That is the philosophical question that really is the core software requirement of a music recommendation engine, and music curation is an ideal testbed case to see if we can build a layer on the internet to act as verification of the search process.

...communicating socially and informally (with strangers) and sharing music is not enough to build a bridge between what people ask for and what they desire.

People have to have a sense that some agency is acting at least semi-exclusively for them and has some insight into who they are."

"At the heart of the online music curation role is the possible solution to the expressed need verses unexpressed desire problem that permeates the Internet and prevents us from developing internet culture beyond purely commercial interests."

"The artists have to be included in the equations that run the algorithms of curation and filtering for the internet to have a future beyond being just another compendium of useless facts and trivia."

Robin Good: Featuring the likes of fashion blogger Susie Bubble, filmmaker Gia Coppola, Evan Oresten from Cool Hunting and Carrie Scott of SHOWStudio to Philippe Von Borries (co-founder of Refinery29), Chris Corrado (Director of Capsule), Warren Fu (music video director for artists including Mark Ronson and The Strokes) and Soraya Darabi (founder of Foodspotting), Curators Conference will take place in a few weeks at the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center in New Yok City.

Here some more details: "...during New York Fashion Week on the 5th September , online channel Portable is presenting The Curators Conference, a day long event featuring the leading international curators and creatives across fashion, film, music, design and technology.

The event aims to, 'explore the many worlds where curation and creativity intersect with modern culture', hoping to inspire audiences and foster industry innovation."

Robin Good: Mixtaping.fm is a new free web service which allows anyone to put together their virtual 60-mins virtual music compilations.

Just like in the old music cassette times, compilations are made of two 30-mins sides, and differently than back then, you can throw in just about any song, track or artist that comes to mind, thanks to the integrated music search engine that Mixtaping.fm provides.

Covers can be personalized, and the service let's you see in real-time how much space your using up with each song you add. Final mixtapes can be easily shared on social media or embedded on your site/blog.

After logging in with Facebook (yes there’s annoyingly no other choice) you can start to add songs to Sworly if they haven’t already been added.

...At first glance, the ‘Add song’ feature is a little confusing, but it’s actually quite easy to use. Simply enter the artist name and song you want to share, and Sworly will automatically find the best video for you.

Here's a great curation story. Derek Vincent Smith also known musically as Pretty Lights has published a video album that is a curation masterpiece since its very inception. To create a uniquely personal sound and style Derek has brought to the recording studio tens of musicians to record and master 25 vinyls from which he would then sample, remix and curate the final tracks of his new album.

The videos of the tracks, (here is a short playlist I've created of some of the most representative ones) are equally impressive, as they have been produced by capturing imagery that would be otherwise be considered utterly useless and curated with graphic and visual effects of all kinds as to generate some truly visual masterpieces.

I don't even understand half of what he has done in this film but it is captivating. The music is pretty, the composition of the images is clever and there are moments of levity to break it up. A new slant on curation to create something new. Interesting watching.

Yannick Servant of Digital Edge has written an interesting article that clearly explains the importance of curation for the future of music.

At the opposite end of where Pandora, Spotify and other auto-curated music channels sit, the power of individual music curation and human-curated playlists, both by artists, DJs and listeners may prove again to have more benefits than automated technology.

The issue here is that there is just too little sharing of valuable music from those, the artists, who are in the best position to do it and who could benefit the most from doing it.

He writes: "Take a look at French artist Brodinski: his Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with musical content from artists he's close to. Or Boston duo Soul Clap, who regularly create DJ charts on Beatport; and, because, there's a "buy" link on the tracks, these guys are actually providing their fans with an incentive to financially support the acts they've curated.

If you believe in the power of connecting with other musicians, of creating a movement, your job as an artist becomes to get connected with your scene, finding the artists you see as part of your movement, help them be discovered and identified as part of the movement, and help them reciprocate. As long as there's an unmistakable unity, the bigger the movement, the bigger everyone's personal gains, ultimately."

"Done properly, curation is a powerful means of connecting, sharing, building your scene, and is a real way of boosting your career. Because by doing so, you:

- Get more people to listen to your music and convert them into fans

- Increase your media outreach

- Develop lasting relations with other artists in your scene

- Generate gratitude among your existing fans for sharing cool new tunes with them

- Show there's no narcissism in your approach: you're not there to poach fans, but to build awesomeness around your entire scene, to transform it into a movement."

Music curation is in the future of music and allows producers and artist the oppotunity of touching their fan base. Wtih music curation you as an artist allow your fans to tell you what they want to hear, this allows the industry to filter out the one hit wonder who linger s around and makes way for the true talents to do what they love.

Robin Good: Music playlists are the best means to support the discovery of music, new and old, and the most effective for any music lover to find and appreciate the very music he likes. Beyond the tradition of artists and stars there is a future of music streams and playlists tailored to very specific tastes, genres and styles.

You do not need to go much far to see that this is in fact already happening. Open iTunes and go within any of the radio sections to realize instantly how niche, curated channels / playlists are the positively the way forward.

While this article on PaidContent utilizes the transition from the album to the playlist as a mere introduction to a set of small complaints about Spotify ability to effectively let users organize their music, I find that this introduction is worth many times the rest of the article.

It may read as obvious stuff, but if you think about it, music curation (playlists created and made navigable in many different ways) are effectively a fantastic, powerful means to let more people discover and enjoy the very music they like the most, with the benefit of all parties involved (artist, listener, curator, middleman/recording company).

From the original article: "The album is dead, long live the playlist – the new primary container unit of music consumption.

iTunes Store’s disaggregation of the album in to its individual parts long ago allowed listeners to reassemble those parts to their own, not artists’, preference.

In fact, there is no more apt an emblem for how our generation can now curate and remix content of all kinds for itself than the music playlist.

...

But is this playlist-centric music universe pre-destined to be the best means of consumption today and going forward?"

I think it is, and nonetheless the author (Robert Andrews) has some respectful complaints about how Spotify lets you save and organize your music, I expect playlist creation and sharing tools to get greater traction as the preferred means to explore organize and make music more accessible to the very people who could appreciate it the most."

This is a new age and albums in my opinion faded away when they started putting music online for people to download,there are online apps and your phone can stream as well. Profit is being made in different ways now that there is iTunes and Spotify involved in the equation.

Robin Good: The FMA is a large curated archive of free, downloadable music of different kinds and genres.

From the official site I have picked up these interesting bits:"Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist?"

"The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.

...

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era.

...all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

The site combines the curatorial approach that these organizations have played for the last few decades, with the community generated approach of many current online music sites.

...

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing.

From the FAQ Page: "The Archive revolves around our Curators, who select and upload all the music you'll find here. Curators come from all over the world and have a wide range of experience with good music. They include freeform radio stations, netlabels, artist collectives, performance spaces, and concert organizers. If FMA were a radio station, the curators would be our awesomely obsessive DJs."

Robin Good: If you want to listen to the music curated by the world best DJs, your search is over.

TheFuture.fm helps you find the best music, promote the DJs who curate it, and hook up with the artists who created it.

From the official site: "Thefuture.fm is your access to the best music in the world - recorded live at exclusive events in New York, in the nightclubs of Berlin, at festivals in Ibiza, and hand-picked from all over the net. All of this, right here, for free.

...there’s too much of everything on the net.

We believe that curation is the answer.

...

We want to give you the most professional DJs; DJs that not only play at the most exclusive events, the best clubs and the biggest festivals around the world, but also up and coming producers scouted from all over the net.

... you learn what songs you’re listening to, and buy them if you love them."

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.